Glass and bottle of Madeira wine from Vinhos Justino Henriques. Colheita 1996 "Fine rich" (Malvasia)
By Beppi Crosaiol, Globe and Mail
Madeira was an important wine in the history of the United States of America.
The go-to tipple of the founding fathers, it was used to toast George Washington's inauguration and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's author, hoarded the stuff. The U.S. warship Constitution was christened with Madeira, not Champagne. John Hancock, the patriot famous for an exuberantly large signature on the Declaration, was a Madeira importer.
Just as noteworthy, the wine directly helped sow the seeds of political change. Ever heard of the Boston Madeira Party?
Years before the more famous tea tax protest of 1773 in Boston harbor, Madeira became its own cause célèbre in the same bay. The British motherland had imposed a tax on the popular beverage, partly in an effort to drive Americans to more expensive port. Mr. Hancock, a wealthy merchant, was arrested on charges of smuggling, and his sloop Liberty was seized in Boston waters. The crackdown prompted a riot against the customs house, effecting Mr. Hancock's release and setting the trigger for the subsequent tea party.
How did the wine come to be so vital to the fledgling republic? Politics. A trade war between England and France led to a British blockade on goods from Europe to the English colonies. The wine of Madeira, a pit stop on the Atlantic sailing route to Africa, Asia and the New World, was exempted. For a while, it was the only non-contraband wine in the United States, the so-called Drink of Patriots. By 1800, a quarter of Madeira's production ended up in New England.
The Portuguese archipelago's remote location 650 kilometers off the African coast also has much to do with the wine's invention. Grape nerds like to insist that soil, vineyard orientation and weather - a combination the French call terroir - give each wine its particular essence. With Madeira, the sea until recently has been more critical than land.
In the 1600s, wine from Madeira was so insipid it had to be fortified with brandy to make it palatable and stable on long sea voyages. Sailors doing business with India gradually came to realize the stuff tasted better on the return trip. That's because the cargo had spent the voyage essentially "cooking" and oxidizing as it pitched and rolled in barrels below deck.
The wine had become bruised, its sugar slightly caramelized, producing a burnt, toffee-like flavour. As the liquid expanded and contracted, the leached oak imparted a luscious texture and vanilla-spice quality. And the fatal flaw of regular wine - oxidation from too much exposure to air - became a virtue in Madeira, imparting a tangy quality akin to sherry.
If you think of cheese as intentionally spoiled milk, think of Madeira as carefully spoiled wine. Coincidentally, cheese and Madeira are stellar partners.
The wine continued to be made at sea for a long time, serving double duty as ballast on vessels bound for the southern hemisphere. Today, the ships have given way to artificially heated warehouses. Cheap Madeira is finished in tanks fitted with steam pipes, while the better stuff is warmed more gradually in casks stored in solar-heated warehouses.
Because Madeira is in effect embalmed wine, it can't go bad the way other wines do. It's the Dick Clark of drink, able to last forever.
Jugs from the late 1770s have been opened to positive reviews in recent years, including some belonging to Thomas Jefferson. The same cannot be said of even the finest red Bordeaux, which, contrary to auctioneers' propaganda and the perverse palates of old-school wine critics, cannot be anything but swill after 200 years in bottle.
Not to make too much of this point, but one might call Madeira the perfect recession wine. Open a bottle and finish it at your leisure - over the course of days, weeks, months or even years; it won't spoil.
Generally less sweet and not as heavy as port, and usually with more invigorating acidity, Madeira also can deliver intriguing notes of citrus peel, molasses, nuts, smoke, old church wood, toffee, dried fruit and herbs.
There are four styles, all named after the grape used to make them. In order of increasing sweetness, they are dry sercial, smoky verdelho, rich but tangy bual and velvety sweet malmsey.
Like other fortified wines, Madeira tends to go best either before or after dinner. Lighter, drier Madeira, especially sercial, is nice as an aperitif. I like it well chilled to accentuate the acidity. Sweeter styles are often served later in the evening, but can also work as aperitifs when poured over the rocks with a twist of lemon.
Besides cheese, Madeira goes nicely with apple pie. You can't get much more American than that.
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